Posts categorized "History"

July 15, 2012

In her 94 years she has seen occupations, wars, tragedy, compassion, and the triumph of humanity over hardship.

Invermere resident, Leida Peepre, grew up among the ancient architecture of coastal Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. But her carefree childhood and teen years spent playing within the 13th century city were cut short by the dark shadow of imminent occupation.

During the Second World War, the Soviet Union blockaded Tallinn’s port and on June 14th, 1940, aerial bomber patrols began to fill the skies above the city.

The Soviets demanded that Estonia agree to allow them to create military bases in the country and install a pro-Soviet government. Under the threat of invasion, the administration of Jüri Uluots agreed to the Russian terms and resigned the country to Soviet control.

Life under the occupation was tough and dissent with the ruling regime was not tolerated, Leida said. “So many were killed by the Russians at the time or deported,” she said. “Anybody they picked up from the street, including women and children, they sent with no food on train cars to Siberia. They used cattle cars with nothing but a hole at the bottom for a toilet. Men, women, children, teenagers — as many as could fit in these cars they shipped to Siberia to work camps.”

July 08, 2012

At first glance, he seems to be a valuable asset for Estonia with an established position within the intellectual elite of Moscow opinion makers. His observations in brief:

The Soviets did occupy Estonia; the independence of the Estonian state was destroyed; Soviet deportations of women, children and the elderly were inhumane; in diplomatic standoffs between Estonian and Russia, the latter comes off as an idiot.

He’s Mihhail Veller, best-selling Russian author, Estonian citizen, recipient of the Estonia’s White Star presidential order, who keeps homes both in Tallinn and Moscow. A member of the Estonian Federation of Authors, Veller was born in Soviet Ukraine, of Jewish parents, graduated from Leningrad State University in Russian language and was “forced” by the authorities to move to Estonian in 1979. (It’s also said that Teet Kallas, editor of the literary journal “Looming” brought him to Estonia as an up and coming writer. There is a wide difference between the two reasons for moving to Tallinn. The first implies opposition to the regime. The second leaves the motivation open.)

July 03, 2012

TALLINN - On his desk in the presidential palace in Estonia's capital, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the third elected president of Estonia in modern times, has an iMac and a MacBook Air. He can also write computer code. Estonia has won itself a reputation for being a tech-savvy nation, a country that produces more digital start-ups per head of population than any other in Europe. And that starts at the top.

Mr. Ilves, in his second and final five-year term, was recently in the news for a very public spat with the economist Paul Krugman. It says something about Mr. Ilves's embrace of technology, and his belief in openness, that he chose the public micro-blogging network Twitter to slam Mr. Krugman.

Mr. Ilves won't be drawn but instead produces two graphs plotting Estonia's gross domestic product: The one used by Mr. Krugman that covers the years 2007-2012, showing GDP to be at little more than 90% of peak value, and another charting from 1996 onward. This tells a different story, namely that, despite the dip, GDP has doubled.

When you look at Estonia's path from throwing off Soviet occupation in 1991 to the highest per capita GDP of any of the three Baltic states today, it is hard not to be impressed by how much this tiny country -- its population at 1.3 million, only the size of Copenhagen's -- with an obscure language and unenviable weather has achieved. Mr. Ilves pays credit to the decisions made two decades ago as the country returned to the map.

June 19, 2012

Greetings from Lappeenranta, in eastern Finland. Everyone is talking about the euro crisis, and the divisions between northern and southern Europe. But another European border is more evident here. The frontier between eastern and western Europe has been bitterly contested for centuries.

In the 20th century, argument over the location of that border cost upwards of a 100m lives. Timothy Snyder’s recent book, Bloodlands, recounts the tragedy of the contested areas in horrific detail. From 1948 to 1989, the border was as far west as it has ever reached following Russia’s victory in the Great Patriotic War.

Today the border has shuffled far to the east. America won the cold war and many Soviet satellite states were rapidly welcomed into the EU. But the line remains uneasy. Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia seem fully attached to the western side, while Hungary is regressing towards totalitarianism. Several states further east are still uneasy partners in the new Europe.

The Finnish border is an anomaly. In 1918 the Finns won independence for a state that extended to the gates of St Petersburg. Russia captured territory in the 1939-40 Winter War. Finland then fought on the losing side in the second world war and did not remain neutral in the cold war. So the once thriving Finnish industrial city of Viipuri is today the depressed Russian outpost of Vyborg.

June 05, 2012

The boat is shallow draft, some 40-feet long and 18-feet of beam, tar pitched, almost clinker built, wide on the Mother of Rivers, the Emajõgi. For 600 years these boats, with their single square sails, plied the Mother of Rivers from Estonia half way to Moscow with spices, returning with furs.

The last of these boats worked some 70 years ago. A federation of Estonians have gathered lost knowledge and built just one, wide on the river, easing its way, Estonian pastries for the guests, of which I am one. Magic.

Eleven thousand years ago these Finno-Ugric-Altaic peoples came here. Just in time, they say, for a 50-meter drop in the Baltic at the end of the last Ice Age. As it retreated, what may have been an ice-bound Baltic came into free contact with the surrounding region.

Estonian is, in fact, close to Finnish and far from Hungarian. Latvia and Lithuania, the two more southern Baltic states, stretching to Poland, speak Indo-European languages. But they are only distantly related to the Germanic and Latin-rooted languages of much of Europe, or the Slavic languages.

March 22, 2012

Apologies to Milan Kundera for borrowing from the title from his literary masterpiece, which explores artistic behaviour during the Prague Spring with an intellectual and philosophical vigour, that apparently is untranslatable. Kundera is on record saying Hollywood’s version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being with Daniel Day-Lewis had little if nothing in common with his book, which was written in 1982, but only published, with Kundera’s approval in the Czech Republic in the original Czech in 2006. Kundera has remarked that the movie had very little to do with either the spirit of the novel or the characters in it.

Yet after listening to the feather-brained Kerli’s now officially, (as of yesterday) released single “Zero Gravity”, and seeing the brand new video, courtesy of Õhtuleht (link below) I found no other words to describe this vapid paean to all that Hollywood in its brainwashing fervour holds dear.

What is truly a weightless number was actually already on the air, if you will excuse the attempt at humour, already last year. Kerli performed “Zero Gravity” at Vabaduse laul, Freedom song, in Tallinn, along with other English language numbers (that August 20th festival marked 20 years of reindependence from Soviet occupation for the younger set). The 25 year-old from Elva apparently has very few Estonian selections in her repertoire. So a young man, who greeted my news about Kerli’s release by beginning to sing the song, tells me.

I’ll leave the blatant anti-Christian symbolism in the video for others to comment on, but it is there – just as it was when Kerli first came to my attention with her initial attempt at swaying young minds with the help of superficial America and Hollywood. That was with the release of “Walking on Air”, which demonstrated more musical and lyrical fluff coupled with mind control symbolism.

March 17, 2012

Deportations, whether perpetrated by Russians or Soviets have been in their arsenal of rule by terror for centuries. They have always represented an attempt to violently remove those whom the authorities have deemed disloyal, distrusted, a political rival etc. This forced resettlement of millions of children, women and men has led to predictable human misery and immortality.

Soviet rule over the Baltic states was a classical colonial occupation complete with armed resistance, economic exploitation and foreign settlement. One should note here that Moscow’s continual denial and rejection of the actuality of the occupation has never been challenged seriously by the international community in a manner with which holocaust deniers have been universally condemned.

Deportations in Estonia can be traced back to the 1500’s: Russia’s Ivan IV deported some of Tartu’s rebellious German population to Russia in 1572; from 1701 to 1708 the armed forces of Peter I deported some 10,000 Estonians to Siberia; in 1708 a large portion of Germans in Tartu were deported to the Vologda region; in the same year nearly 1400 Germans from Narva were deported to various destinations in Russia. Only 700 made it back; in 1781 Catherine II ordered Swedish families in Hiiumaa to be deported to the southern Steppes of Russia. The above are just examples of the numerous deportation operations carried out in the Baltic states.

That’s what our guide, Magrit, calls the vast open-air theater on the outskirts of Tallinn, the ancient capital of the tiny Baltic nation of Estonia. Here, in the late 1980s, Estonians gathered by the thousands to sing patriotic songs and express their deep disdain for their Soviet rulers. Finally, in 1991, the “Singing Revolution” triumphed, and Estonia became free.

Our trip to Tallinn coincides with a national celebration in that theater, marking 20 years of independence. As we enter the grounds, someone hands us small paper versions of the Estonian flag — horizontal bands of black, white and blue — and we edge our way into the vast crowd and find a spot on the grass. Extended families, including seniors in lawn chairs and babies in arms, are everywhere. A local band is playing a fast-paced tune — who knew that a violin and an accordion could be so stirring? — and folks all around us are waving flags and white balloons. We join in eagerly, hoisting our little pennants on their wooden sticks, sharing briefly in this moment of national exhilaration.

Between songs, a huge screen projects images of Estonians offering their observations on the meaning of independence. An athlete urges expatriates to “come back home [on] a ship of songs.” A poet suggests that “survivors are messengers” and that “through them I can remember the future.” A woman says simply: “Something wonderful has happened here. A miracle, really.”

Then Brainstorm, a rock band from the neighboring country of Latvia, plays a tune with the recurring refrain, “That’s all we have.” I think the singer is talking about love, but he could mean the land.

“It is regrettable that American diplomats in Tallinn are once again conniving in the attempts by certain powers in the Baltic States to distort the historic truth and set the Russian and Estonian people at loggerheads,” the ministry said in a statement.

Russia's reaction came after the U.S. Embassy in Estonia issued a statement on March 9 announcing a ceremony commemorating the 1944 Soviet bombing of Tallinn that called the attack “tragic both in its devastating loss of life and its military inefficacy.”

Over 300 Soviet bombers raided Tallinn on March 9, 1944 in an attempt to destroy the Nazi forces occupying the city. However, the bombing mainly claimed the lives of civilians, killing over 500 people and injuring almost 700.

The attack, seen by many Estonians as an act of Russian aggression, remains one of the most controversial issues in the history of the World War II.

The U.S. statement also said the bombing failed to “break the spirit of the Estonian people,” a phrase that Moscow views with “condemnation and outrage.”

It argues the attack has been “taken out of the historical context” and that the bombing was part of Soviet military actions to liberate the Baltic States from Nazi troops, the Foreign Ministry said.

March 12, 2012

Liberated by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles into independence, the three nations enjoyed freedom until the cynical Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 1939 assigned them to the Soviet sphere of influence between Hitler and Stalin.

Subsequently absorbed by the USSR, the states were “liberated’ by the Nazis in their 1941 Soviet invasion plan Operation Barbarossa, only to be “re-liberated” in 1944 by the Red Army.

They remained under Soviet thralldom until the late 1980s, when “reformist” Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s twin policies of “glasnost” (“openness”) and perestroika (“reconstruction”) were taken seriously by citizens of the three republics, whose stroppiness helped encourage other Soviet citizens to end Lenin’s grand experience in coercing peoples to a better future in December 1991.

But, as the old pop song puts it, “breaking up is hard to do,” and Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have remained tied to Russian energy exports even as they have joined both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO).

So, how to break the last (energy) umbilical cord to Moscow, subject to the whims of state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom?

March 11, 2012

Cantus will perform “The Singing Revolution,” an inspiring story of music and revolution in the Baltic States.

In 1989 the people of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia joined hands in a peaceful revolution of song to gain their independence from the Soviet Union. Cantus shares this inspiring story and the music of the Baltic states.

Archaeological investigations have shown that a fort on the limestone plateau of Toompea and a trading post and harbour at its foot, on the Viking route to Constantinople, have existed since the 10th-11th centuries. With the expansion of Baltic trade, the settlement known at that time as Lyndanise (Reval in German, Kolyvan in Russian) was occupied in 1219 by troops of Waldemar II of Denmark, who strengthened the fortifications on Toompea and built the first church.

After coming under direct papal jurisdiction in 1226-27, the town was divided into two parts: the fortress (castrum ) and the lower town (suburbum ). In 1230 the order invited 200 German merchants from Gotland to Tallinn, where they settled around a new church dedicated to St Nicholas, alongside the existing Estonian, Scandinavian and Russian trading posts. In 1248 Tallinn adopted the Lübeck statute, becoming a full member of the Hanseatic League in 1285. Its prosperity was reflected by its rapid growth in the 14th century: work began on the massive town wall in 1310, enclosing an area laid out according to the characteristic Baltic trading pattern with radiating streets. Along with the territory of northern Estonia, the town was sold to the Livonian Order, and it was the latter that was responsible for rebuilding the castle on Toompea as one of the strongest in the region.

With the fall of Visby in 1361 the importance of Tallinn increased substantially. The 15th century saw the transformation of the town, with the construction of a new town hall and other public buildings and the rebuilding of the merchants' wooden houses in stone. It was annexed by Sweden in 1561, and it was Swedish architects who were responsible for the reconstruction of the Toompea area after a disastrous fire in 1684 and for the addition of a system of bastions to the fortifications. In 1710 the town surrendered to the troops of Tsar Peter I, entering into a half-century of commercial and cultural stagnation, but this came to an end when its role as a provincial administrative centre was confirmed, with the castle as its seat. The town was heavily bombed in 1944. The church of St Nicholas and the area around it suffered grave damage.

February 19, 2012

Members of the European Parliament with the Unitas Foundation and NGO TuliPisar invite Baltic communities across the world to hold commemoration events on March 25th, the launch day of the 1949 March deportations.

Soviet mass deportations from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are among the most disheartening events in the history of the Baltic States. During Stalin’s rule, more than 150 000 people were forcefully taken to Siberia, thousands not even surviving the road there. Since 2010, commemoration events have been held in Estonia and by Estonian communities in more than 10 countries. On March 25th 2012, thousands of candles will again be lit in memory of the deportees. Among others, the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Members of the European Parliament are hosting a commemoration event in Brussels.

Baltic communities across the world are invited to join the initiative and hold remembrance events around March 25th, regardless of format. The Unitas Foundation and NGO TuliPisar would be delighted to receive a notification from the organisers of such events at anna.karolin@unitasfoundation.org. Additionally, please visit www.unitasfoundation.org/remem... for a free information kit on Soviet deportations from the Baltic States.

If you wish to contribute to the success of these events in other ways, kindly visit the http://www.unitasfoundation.or... to make a small donation or contact us.Please join us in keeping alive the memory of people who endured inequitable suffering and perished to no avail.

The division was founded in 1944 by the occupying Nazis. The veterans say they allied with the Nazis to defend their country from the Soviets but anti-Nazi campaigners claim the troops were involved in war crimes against civilians. Johan Backman, of World without Nazism, said: ‘The Estonian SS legionaries did not fight for Estonia. They fought for Hitler.’ Russia described the move as ‘blasphemous and unacceptable.

Several hundred men who fought in the Estonian SS still gather every year to commemorate their role in battles against Soviet forces.

The division was founded in 1944 by the occupying Nazis - three years after Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded Russia with the most powerful invasion force in history. More than three million German troops attacked in three parallel offensives. Despite warnings that Germany could not fight a war on two fronts, Hitler saw the Russian invasion of Romania in 1940 as a threat to his Balkan oil supply and invaded with 3,000 tanks, 2,500 aircraft and 7,000 artillery pieces.

The Red Army was disorganised and the Germans were able to push 300 miles into Russia before the winter hit and the advance slowed. The war on the Eastern Front went on for four bloody years and arguably resulted in the eventual defeat of the Nazis.

December 20, 2011

All politics is local. So Congressman Thomas P. O'Neill, the late Democratic power broker, once famously observed. Although the legendary New England buttonholer's succinct aphorism originally concerned an election he'd lost in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1930s, his words continue to resonate.

As they did recently when I set off by Jaguar XJ from a rock-music festival in Latvia to catch up with Toomas Hendrik Ilves, president of Estonia, the smallest, most northern, and most thriving of the three former Soviet republics on the Baltic Sea. Ilves and I once had a political connection, and while it had been some time ago, it was very local. How's that?

The Jaguar part is easy: the carmaker sent an XJ -- my current favourite luxury touring sedan -- overland from its German headquarters, through Poland, to meet us in Riga, Latvia, a handsome port city at the mouth of the Daugava River. From Riga, we would drive an hour to Salacgriva to catch my musical charges, the band OK Go, who were performing at the Positivus Festival, a multiday, open-air rock event. Then it was on to Estonia, where we'd spend a few nights in Pärnu, a sleepy seaside retreat on the Gulf of Riga, before heading to the country's capital, the quaint, walled city of Tallinn. Afterward, we'd travel back to Latvia for a few days of castle hopping before rounding out our whirlwind, 1000-mile Baltic tour with twenty hours in Lithuania, birthplace of my paternal grandmother.

Many surprises lay in store for our intrepid trio of English speakers -- me, photographer Martyn Goddard, and my bon vivant college chum, Richard Hart, a former New Orleanian who, like us, enjoys new places, strong drink, and four square meals a day. Eastern Europe gets a bad rap in the United States, even among those who've never been there, so a little look at the facts, up close and personal, couldn't hurt. Among the things we didn't anticipate: the natural beauty and abundance of unspoiled lands, the quality of the roads, and the general ease of transit.

The people look great, too: fit, well-dressed, handsome. Then there was the unexpected appeal of the architecture, along with the hospitable kindness of persons who once lived behind the Iron Curtain, individuals who we in the West were taught to imagine as grim, boring, and unfriendly, but who proved anything but. Still, for sheer improbability, the Estonian president's story gave everything and everyone else a run for their money.

Although already known to local fishermen and divers, by far the largest underwater object previously unmapped was the wreck of the German cargo steamer SS Meyersledge 15 meters below the surface near the island of Kihnu. According to unconfirmed records, the 63-meter long steamer was sunk by the Soviet Air Force three miles off the coast of Kihnu on September 24, 1944.

"In the Suur Katel Bay [off the Saaremaa coast], we discovered remains of two ships that we are currently working to identify, and an Il-2 plane," Maili Roio, advisor at the Heritage Board and head of the underwater expedition, told Meie Maa. The Il-2 was a Soviet ground-attack fighter used during World War II. Unfortunately, underwater visibility was extremely low at the time of the expedition, Roio said, therefore the archeologists could only retrieve sonar data rather than optical images.

September 07, 2011

Twenty years ago, on September 6, 1991, the Soviet Union recognized the independence of the Baltic republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The empire was breathing its last, many of its agencies were idling and decisions which would have caused an outcry before were made routinely and without much ado. The recognition of the three Baltic countries' independence was sealed by a resolution of the USSR State Council, which did not survive long in the deep shadow of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.

The Soviet Union pulled out of the Baltics without ceremony - a classic case of "French leave." Yet it was a highly significant move, which complicated the work of the commissions later set up in the Baltic counties to calculate the damage caused by the Soviet occupation. It also complicated the simplistic historical revisionism of the Baltics' post-Soviet authorities, according to which the Soviets were no better than the Nazis and left them no hope of independence.

August 24, 2011

TALLINN — Seventy thousand people flocked to the Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the restoration of Estonian independence Saturday, while on Sunday the people of Estonia paid homage to Iceland, the first country to recognize the Baltic republic in 1991, with an Iceland Day festival.

Sinead O’Connor and Kerli, Estonia’s best-known international pop singer, were among 16 acts from both Estonia and abroad who participated in the six-hour Song of Freedom concert on the site where many events of the Singing Revolution, as Estonia’s struggle for liberation in the late 1980s and early 1990s is called, took place.

The Congress of Estonia and Estonian Supreme Council officially restored the Republic of Estonia by a joint vote on Aug. 20, 1991, a day after Soviet party hard-liners had staged a coup in Moscow while Soviet armored troop carriers were on their way to storm Tallinn’s strategic objects.

“We wanted to share this day with our friends from abroad,” said Helen Sildna, chief organizer of both events.

“So far, the tradition of celebrating August 20 had been Estonian national singing; there were a lot of national songs, and it was also a sing-along event that people could join in with. But this time it was a bit of a new concept that we wanted to focus on our friends.

“The way the program came together was by combining artists and musicians who already have a special relationship with Estonia, such as [Finnish accordion player] Kimmo Pohjonen, [Latvian indie-pop band] Brainstorm and [Norwegian folk singer] Mari Boine.”

To have O’Connor headlining the event had a special meaning, as the Irish singer — along with English rock band The Cure — was denied an entrance visa in 1990 when the Soviet authorities were putting pressure on the rebellious republic, preventing her from performing at the Rock Summer festival held at the Song Festival Grounds in Tallinn as scheduled.

August 21, 2011

Researchers at a dig on Estonia's Saaremaa island confirmed the 17-metre-long (55.7-foot) ship used as a burial tomb for warriors had a keel, a device commonly used on sailing vessels to keep them upright in the water by counter-balancing the force of the wind on sails.

So now we have evidence it used sails, said Tallinn University Professor Juri Peets, who is directing the excavation on the island village of Salme where the burial site was discovered last year.

Our ship dates from the year 750 AD ... here in the Baltic Sea region, this is without a doubt the oldest sailing ship that has been found, Peets told local media.

With archeologist's having discovered evidence of broken and chipped bones, they say the 35 the men buried in the vessel appear to have been warriors fallen in battle who were laid to rest in the middle part of the ship in several layers, covered with their shields.

Tens of thousands of people gathered Saturday at Lauluväljak which played a pivotal role in Estonia gaining independence from the USSR 20 years ago, after nearly five decades of occupation

Estonians gathered en masse at the stage _ near the sea just off the center of capital Tallinn _ in the late 1980s and early 90s to protest Soviet rule by singing patriotic songs in a movement that became known as the Singing Revolution.

Saturday's concert, dubbed "The Song of Freedom", pays tribute to Estonia's peaceful struggle to free itself from Soviet repression and was aimed to recapture the unique spirit of 20 years ago through contemporary pop and rock music.

Organizers say up to 70,000 were expected to show up to listen to Estonia's first-tier artists and international acts such as Irish singer Sinead O'Connor and Latvian band Brainstorm.

Baltic and Nordic foreign ministers joined Saturday's Aug. 20 celebration of Estonian independence in the wake of a failed Kremlin coup in 1991. Neighbor Lithuania had already declared independence, and Latvia followed suit one day after.